Rise of the Robots

Now I’ve said before that good graphics don’t always make a good game…RISE OF THE ROBOTS IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT!!! Developed by Mirage and published by Time Warner Entertainment, I’m going to take a look at the Mega Drive version developed by Data Design Interactive and published by Acclaim and was released in 1994.
The story is just too complicated; I cannot explain it for the life of me. But the meat of the game is the gameplay…and it is one of the worst I’ve ever played. The game is a fighting game, but it functions poorly, the whole game is just flailing around and see who wins, there are no combos or special moves, just punch and kick.
Ok, here’s the whole fight in a usual match, you punch and kick and the opponents health goes slightly down, the opponent punches, takes nearly all your health away and it happens at random, unable to win on the FIRST STAGE, with Shaq-Fu at least I could get somewhere, but with this game, nope, you die you start at the beginning.

Sometimes you do win and go to the next stage, I don’t know how I won, I didn’t feel like I improved, I didn’t feel like I got better, the whole game is just random, you might win, you might lose, there is no difficulty set piece, you either win easily or die easily, even on the first stage, most of the time you can win due to the time limit ending with the opponent having less health than you and vice versa.

Having no combos or special moves makes it boring and makes it lack any fun you could have with this game, it’s clunky, the hit detection is terrible, you never know if you hit the opponent, you never connect with your fighter at all, and it’s incredibly unfair.

The second fighter just blocks most of your attacks except for kicking, once you kick he’ll hit you back harder, this happens all the time, I won once when I tried to beat him for the third time, the whole game is based on luck, the game decides if you’re going to win or lose, there’s no flow to the game, it’s a complete mess of a fighter.

The graphics have aged poorly, the cutscene at the beginning is just…horrendous, just ungodly horrendous, the music is just annoying, Mirage advertised that Brian May, a guitarist from Queen was to make music for it, he did, but only one song was included in the game, it’s in the title screen, and it’s forgettable.

Actually the game boasted on about how it had the best graphics, music and gameplay of any game released at the time, gamers were excited to see this revolutionary fighter, critics liked the graphics but hated the gameplay. I hate everything about it.

It’s feels like Mirage were only focusing on the animations and the graphics and forgot to make a good fighting game, this is proof that good graphics doesn’t always make a good game. I know the 3DO looks better but it’s still awful.

Yo Shaq-Fu, I’m really happy for you but im’ma let you finish, but Rise of the Robots is one of the worst fighting games of all time, ALL TIME!!!

You can get it (for collective purposes) on 3DO, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, SNES, Amiga, Amiga CD32, Arcade, CD-i, DOS and the Sega Game Gear.